lecture tours. The gang commenced their careers as bushrangers near Mansfield, in Victoria. While travelling through the Kellys' area of operation, the gang were frequently mistaken for The Kelly Gang and took advantage of this to receive food and to seize guns and ammunition from homesteads. Inspecting Superintendent of Police John Sadleir, made a highly improbable claim that Scott sent word to infamous bushranger Ned Kelly, asking to join forces with him but Kelly sent back word threatening that if Scott or his band approached him he would shoot them down. Scott seems to have never received the reply as his gang left Victoria in the later part of 1879, after operating there for a short time. They travelled north across the border into New South Wales to look for work, far from the police surveillance that stymied any opportunity of employment in Victoria. It was in the southern district of the New South Wales colony that they entered upon the full practice of their profession. In one act they made themselves notorious. On Saturday evening, 15 November 1879 they entered the little settlement of Wantabadgery, about 45 km (28 miles) from Gundagai, and proceeded to "bail up" (confine and rob) all the residents. Capture Scott's gang held up the Wantabadgery Station near Wagga Wagga on 15 November 1879 after being refused work, shelter and food. By this stage they were on the verge of starvation, after spending cold and rainy nights in the bush and in Moonlite's words succumbed to "desperation", terrorising staff and the family of Claude McDonald, the station owner. Scott also robbed the Australian Arms Hotel of a large quantity of alcohol and took prisoner the residents of some other neighbouring properties- bringing the number of prisoners to 25 in total. One man, Ruskin, escaped in an attempt to warn others, but was caught and subject to a mock trial, the jury of his fellow prisoners finding him "not guilty". Another station-hand attempted to rush Scott but was overpowered. A small party of four mounted troopers eventually arrived, but Scott's well armed gang captured their horses and held them down with gunfire for several hours until they retreated to gather reinforcements- at which point the gang slipped out. The gang then holed up in the farmhouse of Edmund McGlede until surrounded by a reinforcement of five extra troopers led by Sergeant Carroll. As the boy Wreneckie